Our anniversary dinner went cold at 9:40 p.m.
I know because I checked the clock when I lit the second set of candles. The first set had already burned down to little puddles of wax on the good plates. My grandmother’s plates. The ones I only took out for birthdays and Christmas and one other night a year.
I’d made osso buco. Marco’s mother’s recipe. It took me four hours. I’d called her in Naples twice to ask questions, and she’d laughed at me on the phone and said, “Elena, cara, you’re going to make my son cry.”
I wanted to make him cry. Good crying. I wanted him to walk through that door and smell the veal and the wine and the orange peel and stop dead in the hallway.
At ten, I texted him.
Are you close?
No answer.
At ten-thirty, I called. It rang five times and went to voicemail. His recorded voice was cheerful and warm. Ciao, this is Marco. Leave a message and I’ll call you back when I’m out of surgery.
Out of surgery.
At eleven, I put the osso buco in the oven on low to keep it warm. At eleven-thirty, I took it out because it was drying up. At midnight, I blew out the candles and sat in the dark at our little dining table in my green dress, the one he said made my eyes look like summer.
At 12:20, my phone buzzed.
Amore, I’m so sorry. Emergency. Couldn’t leave. Don’t wait up. I love you. Happy anniversary. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.
I read it four times.
Then I covered the plates with foil, put them in the fridge, took off the green dress, and went to bed.
I didn’t cry. I wanted to. But I’d done so much crying over Marco’s job in the past year that there didn’t seem to be any left.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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